Barack Obama is openly urged to appoint Left-wing judges

Lefties can be stunningly lacking in self-awareness. See, for example, this editorial in the New York Times. It chides Republican Senators for their "hypocrisy" in threatening to filibuster some of President Obama's judicial nominations. It rages about the way President Bush stocked the Bench with "conservative ideologues". Then it pompously concludes as follows:

"Mr. Obama may be tempted to give in to win Republican cooperation for other parts of his legislative agenda. He should resist that temptation, and get to work right away appointing the kind of highly qualified, progressive-minded judges the nation needs."

Er, hang on, chaps: if it was wrong for Bush to stuff the judiciary with ideologues, why is it right for Obama to do so? Shouldn't judges be politically neutral? Shouldn't they see it as their job to interpret the law, not alter it? Isn't that what the separation of powers means?

The Times is – possibly unwittingly – confusing its terminology. When we talk of a "conservative" judge, we can mean two very different things: either a judge who sees it has his role strictly to interpret the letter of the law; or a judge who is on the political Right, and who is engaging in precisely the same judicial activism that liberals generally favour, but from the opposite direction.

On occasion, these two categories overlap. When Lefties seek to use the courts to advance an agenda that lacks a statutory basis (as they did in the US over abortion law and race, and as they do in the UK over immigration and human rights issues), both types of "conservative" judge will oppose them. But it's important that we maintain the distinction. I don't want God guts 'n guns judges imposing their views on me any more than I want socialist judges doing the same. I want political questions to be settled by people I can vote for.

Of course, many Lefties secretly know that their agenda isn't wildly popular with voters. They rely on the courts – at global as well as national level – to push through measures which they suspect would be rejected at the ballot box. But few of them are as open as the NYT leader-writers about what they're doing.